Мэтью Перл - The Dante Chamber

They made their plans; they would search the grounds of the sanatorium after they arrived, and if they found traces of a potential victim or a victim-in-waiting — as they guessed they might — then they would shepherd the captive to safety until the police arrived.

Neither man wished to speak too much about all the things that could still go wrong. Tennyson, as he did in any circumstance when he was not fully comfortable, spoke about himself. He mused on and on about his poems on the Arthurian legends. “By King Arthur I always meant the soul,” he explained, “and by the Round Table I meant the passions and capacities of a man. There is no grander subject in the world, don’t you agree?”

When Tennyson asked if people agreed with him, he did not pause for the answer.

“Critics wish to make me out as celebrating war, Holmes. By Jove, anyone can see that all my verses about war represent a mood. But the critics are nothing and allow me nothing. For instance, take ‘the deep moans round with many voices.’ ‘The deep’ they say I stole from Byron, ‘moans’ from Horace, ‘many voices’ is Homer’s, and so on...”

A sick man talking about himself, a woman talking about her baby, and an author talking about his book never knew when to stop.

Holmes tried to keep up his end of the conversation, knowing there was nothing they could do until they reached the destination that seemed to become impossibly farther away. But distractions of the present took hold. Holmes could not think of King Arthur’s quests when he was thinking of Dante’s journey on the mountain of Purgatory. The great figures were opposites in some ways. Arthur, said the legends, was consumed by personal tribulations in pursuit of saving the world, while Dante left behind all his personal attachments in order to serve the world, to save humanity from certain doom. As the doctor stared at the dim world framed by the train window, his mind turned to the scene of Dante falling asleep as he moved from the fourth to the fifth terrace of Purgatory — Dante experiences a vision of a beautiful woman, a siren of the sea, who transforms before his eyes into a horrid and foul-smelling witch grasping at him. Dante’s dreams constitute a miniature narrative of their own in Purgatory , an account of the mystical experience of penitence.

The train chugged along with greater difficulty. Laborers would come and clear the tracks, the train would progress, then more tracks would be cleared. Finally, they reached the station in the quiet hamlet of Walsden. It was all but deserted. They found one coachman who agreed to take them, though he gave them a stern warning about the conditions. The warning was as much about how much the drive would cost them as it was about the conditions themselves. If only the driver knew his desperate riders would have paid a king’s ransom.

The snow had piled up in banks. Underneath, the frost was hardening. Holmes thought he could hear the axle grinding beneath them. He was about to shout to the driver, but there was no time. One wheel of the carriage ran up a snowbank, and the entire vehicle separated from the horses and flipped over. Next came a blank space in Holmes’s memory — he found himself shivering and sucking in air, his whole body in the snow, the carriage ten feet from him.

“Tennyson!” he called, and repeated it over and over. He found his companion also in the snow back by the carriage. The laureate’s leg was trapped under the vehicle. “Help me! Help me with him!” Holmes cried.

The driver stood unscathed, but looked back in a stupor at the poet-doctor’s request for assistance. “Did you say Tennyson? Is this the immortal bard of England?”

Tennyson’s mouth appeared to unconsciously stir into a smile.

“Help me with him, man!” Holmes demanded again. “He’s mortal still, and wounded!”

“The laureate Tennyson! The favorite of the queen’s? What have I done?” the driver muttered. “What will they say of me?” Turning to the left, then right, he turned his back on them and ran.

Holmes called after the driver but it was no use. He was gone. Holmes could not lift the vehicle off the poet by himself.

“Nothing to worry about,” Holmes said to Tennyson. “Nothing at all.” Tennyson drifted out of consciousness. Holmes wanted to shout but knew his cries would be shredded to whimpers by the wind.

Constable Branagan, stuffing Tennyson’s letter into his vest pocket, bolted through the halls of Scotland Yard until he found Inspector Thornton, acting superintendent in Dolly’s absence, who was in the detectives’ billiard room.

“Inspector, I need a posse of men to go north to Walsden,” Branagan cried out.

Thornton turned to Branagan and raised one eyebrow at a sharp angle. He took careful aim with his stick and thumped a ball across the table. “I suppose you’re aware that the entire department is in awful crisis, Constable.”

Branagan let his gaze sneak back to the billiard table.

“This,” Thornton said defensively, “helps me cogitate.”

“Of course, sir,” said Branagan. “But I’ve received a message about a crucial development in the Dante Massacres.”

“From who?”

“There isn’t time to explain, sir. It’s complicated.”

“I’m a little surprised you’re not by Inspector Williamson’s bedside,” Thornton said coolly.

Branagan knew the right response was Yes, sir , and to retreat. Instead, he answered, “I’m doing what he would.”

Thornton walked to the other side of the table and assessed his position in the game. “Indeed you are. As a matter of fact, Williamson became so engrossed with your bookman murders that he and the Home Office lost sight of the lurking peril of the Fenians, while the rest of us were left to whistle even for our out-of-pocket expenses. I’d expect the commissioner will see to it that your appointment in our division is short-lived, Constable Branagan. An Irishman like you, lending his hand to a Scotsman like Williamson, how will that look to the public where a foreign threat is concerned?”

“My blood is Irish. I am English. My blood is Irish and I am English.”

“Spare me philosophies. Dolly could be dead by the morning, Constable; I would stick to worrying about that.”

“Inspector Williamson will not die — however badly hurt, he will fight through to survive. How will it look, sir, if the newspapermen find out you lost track of McCord after he got his hands on phosphorus by your own secret arrangement with Ironhead Herman?”

Two detectives playing backgammon and a detective sergeant boxing a heavy bag all looked over. Thornton waved their attention away and carefully leaned his billiard stick on the wall.

“You have begun to learn from your time with Dolly.”

“He’s taught me a thing or two, I believe.”

“Very well. I will give you two men and arms, but understand that it will be accompanied by my recommendation to the commissioner that you are transferred away from our department as of tomorrow morning due to a rebellious Irish temperament.”

Branagan, with no time to lose by arguing, swallowed down the bitter bargain.

Browning’s confusion began at Scotland Yard and soon turned into alarm. After attending to Holmes’s requests related to Sibbie’s care, then stopping over at his own house to order preparations for the worsening snow, Browning returned to Whitehall, walking the path to the Scotland Yard building. He found Christina’s belongings at the police office but no sign of Christina. The place was in chaos. As he tried and failed to locate Inspector Williamson or Constable Branagan, another policeman informed him that there had been an explosion at Clerkenwell Prison when some Fenian agents attempted to break out their allies, and that Dolly had been injured and was being operated on even as they spoke by a team of surgeons. The policeman also said Gabriel Rossetti already had been released to Christina’s care.